Field of the Invention
This invention relates to personalized digital document management, and in particular, it relates to a method and related apparatus for generating aggregated documents from multiple documents, and creating associations among multiple documents, for individual users based on their interactions with multiple digital documents.
Description of Related Art
In a digital rights management system (DRM or RMS) for digital documents, the documents are registered on a rights management server (RMS server), along with associated rights management policies that define the users' access rights to the documents. Users' access to the documents is controlled by the RMS server. In one particular RMS system, each copy of a digital document, such as a PDF document, has metadata embedded in it that includes a license ID or document ID. When a user attempts to open such a document using a viewer application, such as Adobe Reader™, the viewer application contacts the RMS server; the RMS server determines, based on stored digital rights management information including the rights management policy associated with the document, whether the requesting user has access rights to the document. Based on a reply from the RMS server, the viewer application will open the document for viewing (or other actions such as printing, copying, etc.) by the user, or deny the access.
DRM systems are often used in educational settings where students study course materials which are digital documents managed by RMS servers. Typically a student will study several documents for a semester. Tools that help students (users) to conveniently organize and manage the study materials are desirable.